“Aw, damn!” he said again, grinding the heel of his hand into his right temple. “Damn, damn, damn!”
“Who the hell are you?” da Vinci asked.
The little man looked astounded that da Vinci would ask. “I be Knee High.”
“To what?” Looper asked.
“That’s my name, man!”
“We want your real name,” da Vinci insisted.
“That be it! I had it legally changed. You all can check, you wanna take this farther. I’m-I was-Cold Cat’s right hand.”
Beam saw that Lenny had his head up and was staring glumly at the little man.
“You know this guy?” Beam asked.
Lenny waited a while before answering, as if still numbed by shock and grief. “He’s Knee High. He hangs around Cold Cat all the time.”
“Hung around,” Looper corrected.
Lenny buried his face in his hands again.
“Okay, Knee High,” da Vinci said. “What is it you want?”
“Knee High wants to confess.”
“Everyone, even the remaining techs, stopped what they were doing and stared at him.
“This all Knee High’s fault,” Knee High said. Then he began wailing again. “Damn, damn, damn!”
“You’re saying you killed Cold Cat?” Beam asked.
Knee High’s eyes widened and he wore his astounded look again. “Cold Cat? Naw, Knee High loved that man. But this still all Knee High’s fault. Knee High killed Edie.”
It took Beam a few seconds to realize what the little man was saying, and not just because he was one of those people who referred to himself in the third person. “Edie Piaf? Cold Cat’s wife?”
“She weren’t no kinda decent wife,” Knee High said. “Knee High did just what the jury said Cold Cat didn’t have no time to do, left my apartment a minute after him and got a cab ’cross town, killed Edie, then ran most of the way back. Couldn’t get no cab. Didn’t matter then, anyways, ’cause Edie was dead. Knee High never thought you guys’d nail Cold Cat for it. Then, when you did, it figured he’d get off, him bein’ innocent. Knee High was gonna say something if he didn’t. That Merv Clark gave testimony got him off. Me, Clark, we both lied our asses off on the stand. Clark was our insurance. Cold Cat was gonna get some green to him. Don’t know if he ever did.” Knee High looked from da Vinci to Beam with anguished eyes. “One thing’s sure, though. Knee High killed Edie cause she an’ Knee High were gettin’ it on behind Cold Cat’s back. We was at each other for a while. She was gonna tell Cold. Imagine that cunt! It ain’t that Knee High was scared of Cold if he found out, but it woulda killed Cold. Cold, he loved that bitch, but she took no notice of him ’cept he could help her career. Knee High had to kill her so she wouldn’t talk and ruin ever’thing.” He began to cry. “Ever’thing ruined now anyways. It all Knee High’s fault.”
There was a roar from the other side of the room that startled everyone, and the huge form of Lenny came rocketing at Knee High.
Looper and Beam intercepted him but could only slow him down. Looper had him around the waist. Beam caught an elbow in the stomach and sank to the floor. He could only hang on to one of Lenny’s ankles. Da Vinci jumped in and wrapped an arm around Lenny’s bull neck.
Lenny wouldn’t be deterred. Dragging the three men, he continued to move toward the cornered, terrified Knee High. Nell hurled herself on the slowly moving pile of humanity but was brushed aside. She rushed to the door and summoned one of the uniforms on duty in the hall.
He was a man almost as large as Lenny, and he had a weighted baton, which he brought down over and over on Lenny’s head. Hard wood bouncing off Lenny’s skull made a hollow, thumping sound, as if a melon were being struck.
It seemed to dawn on Lenny only gradually that he was being clubbed. He finally slowed and stopped his forward motion, but he didn’t go down, merely slouched. The uniform from the hall kept pounding him, as if angry at Lenny’s lack of reaction.
Beam reached out a hand and caught the uniform’s wrist. “Okay, okay, he’s gonna cooperate.”
The uniform nodded and moved away, still gripping the baton in his right hand, tapping it in the palm of his left. His chest was heaving and his adrenaline was pumping. He still saw Lenny as unfinished business.
Lenny stood with his head bowed, seeming to have suffered nothing other than a change of attitude.
Looper and Nell led him back to the sofa, where he sat morosely and gave no indication that he knew his head was beginning to bleed.
Knee High was still squatting in the corner, back on his heels, trembling. “You shoulda let him kill Knee High! You shoulda!”
“We can leave you two alone,” da Vinci offered.
Lenny shook his head violently from side to side. “No, no! I jus’ wanna do what I gots to do. Thas’ all what’s left for me. I jus’ wanna-”
“We know,” da Vinci said. He trudged over and sat down hard in an orange armchair. Beam was already sitting in the matching chair. Looper was standing bent over with his hands on his knees. The uniform was leaning back against a wall. Down from his adrenaline high, he’d stopped tapping his baton in the palm of his hand.
Nell read Knee High his rights. She was the only one in the room not out of breath.
56
Dust motes rioted silently in a shaft of morning sunlight lancing in between the drapes and casting a Picasso- like symmetry over the wall and bureau.
Nell’s bedroom was cool. The air conditioner had cycled off, and only the blower was on. It was barely light outside the closed drapes, and the morning rush hadn’t yet developed. The city was quiet except for the occasional swish of traffic, and distant shouting and metal clanging somewhere blocks away. A bird chirped determinedly nearby, maybe on the sill.
Nell lay beside the sleeping Terry, listening to the even rhythm of his breathing, and wondered if she’d mentioned to him that the police were pulling protection away from Cold Cat and assigning it to Melanie Taylor? The question nagged her more than it should. She couldn’t remember doing so, but it was possible. Just as it was surely possible that whoever had shot Cold Cat knew with certainty about his reduced protection. The killer had created a diversion, then slipped like grease through the police and the building’s security.
At the precise time when Cold Cat had been killed yesterday, Terry was alone in his apartment, scanning scripts for parts he thought he might have a shot at if he auditioned. Nell thought it odd that Terry seemed almost to make it a point to mention his whereabouts to her.
At about that same time, Nell had been talking with Jack Selig over drinks in the softly lighted lounge at Keys, a new four-star restaurant over on Third Avenue. Her watch at Melanie Taylor’s had ended, and this was, in a way, she told herself, a continuation of the investigation. It had been a few drinks and conversation, nothing more; a gentleman always, Selig had kept his word about that.
But Nell, having been with another man, didn’t think it was a good idea to press Terry about his whereabouts. That would be edging too close to the kind of pot-and-kettle argument that could end a relationship Nell desperately wanted to continue.
She recalled that Terry hadn’t really much of an alibi for the time of Carl Dudman’s death, either.
But Terry lived alone. And she was a cop; she knew how seldom people who lived alone, with no one to witness their lives, had firm alibis.
Terry’s arm was suddenly across her chest, just beneath her breasts, startling her. His big hand closed on her bare upper arm.
“I thought you were asleep,” she said.
“Been lying here looking at you,” he said. “Not much I’d rather do.”
She laughed. “Oh? Is there something you’d rather do?”
He raised his head and kissed her. Bad breath. She didn’t mind.
“There is something I’d rather do,” he said, “but we did it only a few hours ago.”
